[BM] Some help on high magic damage bosses

hi there, today we were running with my guild elegon 10 and we realized that i was taking a crazy ammount of damage, i was offtanking and a dk was MT. The point is that when i was tanking the boss i take a lot of damage, especially after some stacks (between 5-9). Im not sure if monks take this insane ammount of magic damage but i was using my cds correctly, guard/zen med/diffuse magic to prevent the high damage burst after some stacks but even at low stacks i was taking a crazy ammount of damage, i was barely going from 100-10 in one low stacked breath, and yes, i was cleaning stagger nearly all the time, wouldnt let it go to heavy or insta wipe. This didnt happen on dk, he wasnt receiving the ammount damage that i took. Same goes with tsulong, another INSANE magic damage boss, his breath at 6 stacks can fucking oneshot me if healers arent prepared for that.

Maybe we were doing the encounter bad so we used to have more stacks than we should.

We were doing something like, dk takes the boss, when first add spawns i take the boss, he cleans himself (meanwhile everybody is dpsing the add), we wait till the new add spawns and he taunts, i get the add and clean myself. Im not sure if every dps should go and dps it because i think we should last the add a bit more longer so there is no downtime between cleansing stacks.

Sorry if the problem is about raid errors like the "all dps should dps the add" thing, not really used to the pve enviorement more than normal stuff. (any tip to go against elegon is welcome too, we are "progressing" a little bit every day)

You need to be able to survive a breath as 12-13 stacks (a worst case scenario is when this happens at the same time as annihilation for another 200k dmg). For this you must use a cd. If you go from 100-10 in a breath than you didn't use a CD. Rotate Guard/Dampen Magic/ZenMed to deal with this, where you will have a Guard up for every tanking cycle. If you find yourself out of CDS and an incoming breath at high stacks you have to call out to your raid for en external cooldown on you.

What you can also do is just eat the first breath on low stacks. It won't hurt that much anyway, and you can use a cd for 2nd and 3rd if you get one.

Stagger does not work for magic damage so you will take the full hit. Therefor it kinda hits monks a bit harder relatively speaking as we have the lowest HP of all tanks.

Glyph Guard. That's what did the trick for me. Not only will it mitigate more of Elegon's breath, but you'll also be able to put it up on yourself far sooner, meaning it's off CD a lot quicker for the next breath/annihilation.

Once I started properly managing cooldowns I found I took a lot less damage from the magic attacks than the other tanks (warrior, paladin), so once you get this down you shouldn't have any issues with it I'd imagine.

You need to be able to survive a breath as 12-13 stacks (a worst case scenario is when this happens at the same time as annihilation for another 200k dmg). For this you must use a cd. If you go from 100-10 in a breath than you didn't use a CD. Rotate Guard/Dampen Magic/ZenMed to deal with this, where you will have a Guard up for every tanking cycle. If you find yourself out of CDS and an incoming breath at high stacks you have to call out to your raid for en external cooldown on you.

What you can also do is just eat the first breath on low stacks. It won't hurt that much anyway, and you can use a cd for 2nd and 3rd if you get one.

Stagger does not work for magic damage so you will take the full hit. Therefor it kinda hits monks a bit harder relatively speaking as we have the lowest HP of all tanks.

Pretty sure Monks get the same stamina coeficients as other tanks, as well as close to the same stamina boost. After doing some calcs, DKs get 43% extra stamina, about 47% with Stoneskin Gargoyle runeforge, Prot Paladins come in second at around 31% extra stamina, we have the same amount as Guardians, 26% extra stamina, and Prot warriors come in last, at 20% extra stamina. Since stamina on gear doesnt change outside of trinkets, and some very few pieces (Same ilvl warrior with non-stamina trinkets will have similar stamina on gear compared to, well, EVERYONE), Monks come in 3rd on the tank health.

We also take the exact same amount of magical damage as a Guardian (25% less then others), Warriors (Also 25% less then others), and less unmitigated magical damage then Paladins (who take 15% less magical damage) and quite a bit more unmitigated magical damage then DKs (Who, being the ones with the most CDs, take a blank 10% less damage then others, 5% less then Paladins, 10% less then the other 3). We also have a few cooldowns to deal with it, although not as many as the DK- Diffuse Magic, 90% less damage on a 90 second cooldown, and Zen Meditation, 90% less damage on a 180 second cooldown. Finally, we have Fort Brew, which is 20% less damage, plus 20% extra health on a 180 second cooldown.

Nows, DKs, they have 75-100% less magic damage on a 45 second cooldown, plus 20% less damage on a 60 second cooldown, plus a myriad of self heals. Thus, if he is using his cooldowns properly, you probably wont notice him taking any damage (For instance, he can use 2 back-to-back DS to essentially heal himself to full in 2 seconds after every single breath). He can also easily mitigate ALL Annihilates.

Here is my suggestion- Clear stagger before every breath. Make sure to use Guard only for Annihilates, so that it lessens the spikes (If you are managing to only have 2 during the first phase, and 4 during the second, you will have a cooldown for everyone but the last). Use Expel Harm and Chi Burst after every Breath - you get a decent amount of vengeance so you heal for quite a bit, AND you have 50% extra healing recieved (Try Chi Burst so it heals right after the breath ends, then follow up with Expel Harm. Gather all nearby healing orbs while doing this). Try to time usage of Elusive Brew with having the dodge bonus up right after he finishes casting his Breath, maybe you wont get hit. Also, do you have at least 1 stamina trinket? For Elegon, in your situation, I would suggest 2 Stamina trinkets, and a stam flask. For tank healing, the issue isn't ooming- its the tank being deaded by a breath-annihilate combo. More stamina will help you to avoid this unfortunate combo.

So, remember, use the 50% extra healing to your advantage. The boss's swing timer is reset by the breath, so you have exactly 2.4 seconds (I think) after the breath to get yourself stabilized.

---------- Post added 2012-12-31 at 10:17 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Kisho

Glyph Guard. That's what did the trick for me. Not only will it mitigate more of Elegon's breath, but you'll also be able to put it up on yourself far sooner, meaning it's off CD a lot quicker for the next breath/annihilation.

Once I started properly managing cooldowns I found I took a lot less damage from the magic attacks than the other tanks (warrior, paladin), so once you get this down you shouldn't have any issues with it I'd imagine.

This right here is the best option for Elegon, in terms of glyphs.

Anyone ever notice how the sun seems to shine silverish now? Didn't it used to shine goldish? PM me if you've noticed this.

Actually it may help by a LOT,i guess the right thing to do is to coordinate healers to prevent the first breath with some precasted cheap heals or shields and pop guard before the heavy, bursty breath. Overall, are we doing the boss right or we are missing on something? Anyways, when i could cast Guard just in time when elegon started casting his breath, it covered 90% of the breath damage, which was something that surprised me(i had no glyph of guard). Sadly ,as a new tank (i dont tank since wotlk), im having some problems with the switchs in that fight, but i guess it will get fixed with more wipes, we did to Elegon with 0 wipes so thats good for me on my first time tanking.

What should i do when comic sparks spawn and floor appears again, should i tank these pesky mobs outside or into the circle? I tried both but actually its mindblowing having like 5 adds on you + cleaning yourself the debuff + take the boss again. Its just..wow, but i think some practise will fix it.

Next time we raid i will do something like this:

ignore the first breath
guard the second
in case there is a third one, zen med

after i take the boss again, same stuff as before but instead of zen med > diffuse magic

if there is ANOTHER time i have to tank it (i dont think so, because it spawns 3 adds and i take the boss 2 times, i start offtanking here) fortifying brew

its rather easy now that i see, thanks everyone.

@raugnaut: so i should save guard of annihilations? didnt know that one, and yeah, there was one time that we wiped and there was going to be breath + annihilation and my little monk suddenly dissapeared of the encounter. But tbh, what mostly kills me is the annoying breath damage, but i will try both, first i will try to do my way, using 2 cds IF necessary when im tanking over elegon, and then if we wipe i will use guard for annihilations only.

Pretty sure Monks get the same stamina coeficients as other tanks, as well as close to the same stamina boost. After doing some calcs, DKs get 43% extra stamina, about 47% with Stoneskin Gargoyle runeforge, Prot Paladins come in second at around 31% extra stamina, we have the same amount as Guardians, 26% extra stamina, and Prot warriors come in last, at 20% extra stamina. Since stamina on gear doesnt change outside of trinkets, and some very few pieces (Same ilvl warrior with non-stamina trinkets will have similar stamina on gear compared to, well, EVERYONE), Monks come in 3rd on the tank health.

Yes, but what i meant was, Monks in general gear with dps leather, so in a raid environment we will be lowest on hp, therefor relatively speaking a magic damage attack will take a larger chunk of our hp bar opposed to other tanks.

As for adds, coordinate with the other tank who will tank adds and who will pick up boss when floor comes back up. When I do it, i'm on add duty and our prot warrior picks up boss. I place my statue near the console and make sure i have threat on all adds that spawned on my side. Then I use aoe taunt to pick up as many of my prot warriors adds as possible and try to aggro the ones that got through, then bring them into the circle. Once inside circle I leg sweep and everyone starts to aoe dps them down. At this point don't try to tank them, any more than 3-4 on you might kill you. Just stun/kite. I've also asked a dps:er here to follow up with an aoe stun after mine ends to keep them in place a little longer.

We used to have some problems in phase switch with little adds. This was due to either dps starting killing adds too early, or a healer being out of position and get smacked by adds, or someone else being out of position and getting hit by breath. Healers had to learn to position themselves so tanks would have some time to pick up adds, and dps:ers had to learn to wait to aoe adds until they were grouped up inside circle. When we kill him now, we actually have our dps:ers go straight on boss while I gather up adds, then they switch to kill them after I've stunned them.

So point is, everyone needs to play correctly during phase shift. Dealing with the adds here is not solely the tanks responsibility although we play the biggest part in it.

Yes, but what i meant was, Monks in general gear with dps leather, so in a raid environment we will be lowest on hp, therefor relatively speaking a magic damage attack will take a larger chunk of our hp bar opposed to other tanks.

umm...can't block dodge or parry a magic attack, and aforementioned warriors have less stam bonus than us, same ilvl gear monks won't be the "lowest"
since you can't reforge for stam, it doesnt matter if haste-crit, or parry-dodge-mastery, doesn't change much... i don't quiet get what you are saying there.

also bkw, OP you didn't mention if you were pulling the add off the platform when he is under 25%? it dies real fast usually start moving around 30% myself
if he explodes on the platform +50% damage raid wide.

umm...can't block dodge or parry a magic attack, and aforementioned warriors have less stam bonus than us, same ilvl gear monks won't be the "lowest"
since you can't reforge for stam, haste-crit, or parry-dodge-mastery, doesn't change much... i don't quiet get what you are saying there.

Whilst the scaling may be the same, it seems to always turn out that Monks have the lowest HP. Why this is I'm unsure, though there are probably several factors:

-Monks don't prioritise stamina. We don't gem for it, we don't enchant for it (much). We just don't go for it at all.
-As such, while other tanks are using stuff like the stam enchant on shoulders/legs, we're using the agility ones.
-Other tanks may also use the stamina trinkets more often than us, since we're actually wanting the agility DPS trinkets for tanking
-They may also use the stamina consumables more often, while we use agility, or the armor/haste elixirs.

Whilst the scaling may be the same, it seems to always turn out that Monks have the lowest HP. Why this is I'm unsure, though there are probably several factors:

-Monks don't prioritise stamina. We don't gem for it, we don't enchant for it (much). We just don't go for it at all.
-As such, while other tanks are using stuff like the stam enchant on shoulders/legs, we're using the agility ones.
-Other tanks may also use the stamina trinkets more often than us, since we're actually wanting the agility DPS trinkets for tanking
-They may also use the stamina consumables more often, while we use agility, or the armor/haste elixirs.

All little things individually, but it adds up overall.

This, monk have the lowest health of all the tanks and some might argue their HP is too low but that is only when talking about cutting edge progression.

To the OP do you have any logs, cos what you are describing sounds very odd, on normal mode I never bothered glyphing guard and found that the damage was pretty laughable from breaths, to the point where our warrior tank was getting healer CD's and extra attention and I was just kicking back and loling.

A couple of things to watch out for:

When using Zen Med, wait untill you see the cast bar, last thing you want is for Zen Med to get meleed
Keep an eye on Anihilation and try to time your diffuse to catch it as well as breath if they are going to come close

If I had to guess I'd say that some of the problems would be the dps so you are taking extra adds and breath and therefor more stacks. Depending on your raid setup you might want to try dragging the add to the boss when it spawns so people can cleave them and then start moving to the edge at 50-60% HP. It's important that the mob only gets 1 pulse off once it hits 25% inside the ring when you are progressing as this will put extra stress on the healers and potentially distract them from tank healing. Also, it's important for the add tank to reset there stacks before picking up the add as the extra damage they take tanking the add at 8+ stacks will again serve as a distraction for the healers and is totally avoidable.

Hopefully some of this will help but failing that logs will help people give you more concise advice.

Yeah, i never got melee'd while zen med. I tried to align diffuse to negate both breath and annihilation, but after all i end up eating some ticks of damage, nothing serious there. Most of the damage i take is when i have lots of stacks and no guard up for use.

-Monks don't prioritise stamina. We don't gem for it, we don't enchant for it (much). We just don't go for it at all.
-As such, while other tanks are using stuff like the stam enchant on shoulders/legs, we're using the agility ones.
-Other tanks may also use the stamina trinkets more often than us, since we're actually wanting the agility DPS trinkets for tanking
-They may also use the stamina consumables more often, while we use agility, or the armor/haste elixirs.

New to tanking and I have no raid experience so I have no opinion on the matter; however, askmrrobot is suggesting I use stam gems and enchants and if I feel that my play style is 7.5/7.5 and haste is "sufficient", perhaps stam would be a viable direction? I know that it's no crit (which converts to more EB)

Whilst the scaling may be the same, it seems to always turn out that Monks have the lowest HP. Why this is I'm unsure, though there are probably several factors:

-Monks don't prioritise stamina. We don't gem for it, we don't enchant for it (much). We just don't go for it at all.
-As such, while other tanks are using stuff like the stam enchant on shoulders/legs, we're using the agility ones.
-Other tanks may also use the stamina trinkets more often than us, since we're actually wanting the agility DPS trinkets for tanking
-They may also use the stamina consumables more often, while we use agility, or the armor/haste elixirs.

All little things individually, but it adds up overall.

All of these things are also true for Guardian Druids, who get the same amount of stamina bonus and magic damage reduction from their stance as Brewmasters. They do have a lot more armor though (which isn't relevant for the magical damage discussion anyways).

New to tanking and I have no raid experience so I have no opinion on the matter; however, askmrrobot is suggesting I use stam gems and enchants and if I feel that my play style is 7.5/7.5 and haste is "sufficient", perhaps stam would be a viable direction? I know that it's no crit (which converts to more EB)

Ask Mr Robot is bugged for Brewmasters and almost entirely wrong, don't use it. Apparently the WW stat weights will work for us though, so you could use those. Not tried it myself though.

You are correct though that there are some fights in which we would want more stamina, mainly because the other stats just won't do anything (Lei Shi being the primary offender here). For those fights all you'd need to do would be switch to 2x stam trinkets, use stam flask/food, and maybe switch another couple of items (helm for a stam meta, legs/shoulders for stam enchants, those sorts of things). You wouldn't want to do anything more than that.

---------- Post added 2013-01-01 at 09:34 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Joán

All of these things are also true for Guardian Druids, who get the same amount of stamina bonus and magic damage reduction from their stance as Brewmasters. They do have a lot more armor though (which isn't relevant for the magical damage discussion anyways).

I must admit my experience with guardian druids is very limited: we don't have one in our raids, nor have I ever seen one... Anywhere, in MoP. So they may have similar HP levels to Monks, I don't know! Would be odd, since they've always been the 'high stam/armor' tank in ye olden times. :P

All of these things are also true for Guardian Druids, who get the same amount of stamina bonus and magic damage reduction from their stance as Brewmasters. They do have a lot more armor though (which isn't relevant for the magical damage discussion anyways).

Druids have 14*1.2*1.05*1.06*1.1 = (20.56824) health per stamina (14 = base, 1.2 = bear form, 1.05 = leather bonus, 1.06 = HotW. According to the bear forum, they also gain an extra 1.1 from somewhere, which I can't seem to pinpoint.) So they get at least a little more hp than us.

Yes, but what i meant was, Monks in general gear with dps leather, so in a raid environment we will be lowest on hp, therefor relatively speaking a magic damage attack will take a larger chunk of our hp bar opposed to other tanks.

ALL gear, sans trinkets and a VERY few pieces (In cata, I think only 2 pieces had a different amount of stamina compared to other items of the same ilvl) have the same amount of stamina. I.E ALL 496 chest pieces have EXACTLY 1835 stamina. Thus, with no gems/enchants/stam trinkets, if you and a plate tank have an equal ilvl, the only place for more stamina comes from tanking coefficients in various stances and such. Thus, in equal Ilvl, a DK will have aroun 8% more hp, a paladin around 4%, and a warrior about 3% less (These odd numbers come from the fact that base hp is not affected by stamina- base hp is also equal for ALL classes. Thus, a 10% stamina bonus is NOT a flat 10% health increase, but generally less.)

Finally, taking the OPs example of a DK offtank, the DK has slightly more health, BUt he also takes 15% more unmitigated magical damage then the monk- 10% less damage taken compared to the monks 25% less damage taken. I think the OP is most likely seeing the DK use 2 back-to-back Death Strikes combined with one of the DKs many cooldowns to essentially appear as though he took no damage at all- with 2 back-to-back DS, the dk will heal a minimum of 14% total health, and up to 60% of recently taken damage (all damage in a 5 second window before use). 50% of 60%=30%, so on Elegon, a DK can, in 2 seconds, heal 90% of damage taken from breaths/annilihaltions, without cooldowns.

Druids have 14*1.2*1.05*1.06*1.1 = (20.56824) health per stamina (14 = base, 1.2 = bear form, 1.05 = leather bonus, 1.06 = HotW. According to the bear forum, they also gain an extra 1.1 from somewhere, which I can't seem to pinpoint.) So they get at least a little more hp than us.

I didn't calc Heart in there since not all tank druids have it. With it, yes, we are 4th lowest. Since not 100% of bears take Heart (NV is a good option, its a tranq on a 3 min CD), we are tied with bears without it. So, in terms of base HP, DKs>Paladins>Bears w/ Heart> Bears wo/heart=Us>Warriors.

---------- Post added 2013-01-02 at 01:41 AM ----------

One last piece of advice- if its the MAGIC damage only, you can swap to Mirror from TB. It still functions the same as before Mists, and ive used it on a few fights with heavy magic damage (Lei-Shi LFR while tanking, couple challenge mode bosses where the melee damage is low but the magic damage is high), and found that it reduces all magic damage taken during it by at least 40%- i've completed resisted magical damage with it up before.

Anyone ever notice how the sun seems to shine silverish now? Didn't it used to shine goldish? PM me if you've noticed this.

One last piece of advice- if its the MAGIC damage only, you can swap to Mirror from TB. It still functions the same as before Mists, and ive used it on a few fights with heavy magic damage (Lei-Shi LFR while tanking, couple challenge mode bosses where the melee damage is low but the magic damage is high), and found that it reduces all magic damage taken during it by at least 40%- i've completed resisted magical damage with it up before.